Closed loop control systems are used in a wide variety of applications and generally provide good control. However, when sources of noise contaminate the control signals in closed loop systems, such closed loop control systems may fail to operate properly. The noise in a noise contaminated closed loop control systems often may be characterized by a slowly time-varying fundamental frequency component f0 plus its harmonics. Such noise, for example, may be introduced into the control system by a nearby motor drive line.
Where noise contaminates the control signals of a closed loop control system to the point where the control system fails to operate properly, it is necessary to prevent or eliminate the noise. Generally, noise can be prevented from being introduced into the control system such as through the use of shielding, or noise can be removed from the control signals of the control system such as by the use of filtering. Shielding is often impractical, and filtering often introduces signal impairments which can be as bad or worse than the noise. As an example of the latter problem, noise removal by lowpass filtering is often not acceptable because of the amplitude and phase distortion introduced by the lowpass filter and because of the destabilizing influence of the resulting increased phase lag on the closed-loop system.
A low phase shift, low distortion noise attenuation type of filter has the potential of providing a better solution to the noise problem. Very narrow band low distortion notch filtering for the removal of a single spectral noise component are also well known. Moreover, it is known to interconnect such notching filters in order to remove plural offending noise components. However, it has not been known how to tune the notch filter sections so that the time- varying noise components are effectively filtered. Moreover, known narrow band notch filters are complex and do not combine simplicity, low coefficient sensitivity, low roundoff noise generation and propagation, and/or simple scaling for a wide dynamic range.
The present invention, therefore, is directed to a harmonic series filter which overcomes one or more of the problems of the prior art.